Wednesday, October 28, 2015

This whole week is devoted to the SNARKOLOGY HALLOWEEN HOP and the prizes and fun that go with it... click on the image to enter the Giveaway!

But... before I signed up for the Hop I promised a visit to Marin MacGinnis, who writes historical romance. I loved (and reviewed)
her novel STIRRING UP THE VISCOUNT, released back in January of this
year.... and am so excited that she has a new book out AND took the time
to chat with me!

To access the Halloween Hop and the BIG GIVEAWAY, click on the banner above or on the left sidebar. But first, stay and say hi to Marin!

Welcome, Marin!

Thanks
so much for having me here today, Katie!

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I
have lived almost half my life in a tree-lined, unabashedly liberal suburb of
Cleveland, Ohio. I have been married to the same great guy for over 20 years,
and have one tween-aged son. We all live together in a drafty old house with
our two standard poodles, Larry and Sneaky Pete. By day, I’m a lawyer, which
really isn’t as much fun as writing. I’m totally into genealogy, which can be
as much fun as writing, and I’m a card-carrying member of the Daughters of the
American Revolution.

What kind of books do you like to read and write?

I
read all kinds of books (except nonfiction—just can’t get into those). Historical
romance and young adult are probably my favorites, but I enjoy mysteries,
especially historical mysteries, and contemporary romance as well.

I
write historical romance set in the Victorian era. I am what my husband likes
to call a ‘research weasel’ (isn’t that sweet? ;p) so writing historicals came
out of my interest in research, and I love that time period—the world changed
so significantly during the years of Queen Victoria’s reign, from industry to
social and sexual mores and everything in between.

Research Weasel. Hmmm. Yes, very sweet ;-) Besides the cute title, what's your favorite part of being an author?

It’s
a socially acceptable way to ignore people. ;) Seriously, though, I just love
to create stories and play with words. I have also met some really incredible
people through writing.

What's your approach to writing? Do you plot or go with the flow?

I
used to be a total pantser, but that resulted in a pretty terrible book which
now languishes under the proverbial bed. My first two published books were
hybrid plotter/pantser books—I prepared a rough outline and ran with it--which
worked reasonably well, but I am trying to plot the one I am currently writing,
which seems to be going better. We’ll see what happens when I get to the
dreaded middles, as that is what usually trips me up.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?

I’d
love to make myself invisible, at least occasionally. It would be wonderful for
people watching.

Tell us about your new release!

My
latest book, Secret Promise, releases October 30 from The Wild Rose Press. It is
set in the 1860s, and tells the story of the long-lost brother of the heroine
in my first book.

Here's the blurb:

Falsely imprisoned as a blockade-runner during the American
Civil War, Edward Mason yearns to go home. But when after seven years he
finally returns to England, the life he expected is gone. His parents are dead,
his home destroyed, his father’s legacy stolen, and his girl—his girl is now
the single mother of a child Edward never knew.

Abandoned by the man she loved and disowned by her family,
Anna Templeton has learned to stand on her own two feet and make a home for her
son. Now the successful owner of The Silver Gull tavern, she's not about to put
their happiness in the hands of the one man who let her down so badly.

Edward is determined to regain Anna’s love and be a father
to his son. But when a series of suspicious accidents threaten him and those he
loves, he must stop the man responsible, or lose everything.

Ooh, I can't wait! I so loved the first book and hope those characters play a part in this one, too! Okay, you’re casting the movie version of your novel – who would you choose for
the main characters? We’re talking dream cast.

When
I started writing Secret Promise, I envisioned Colin O’Donoghue (Hook, in "Once
Upon a Time") as Edward, Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley, in the Harry Potter
movies) as Anna, and Kevin Spacey as David Weston—he’s so good at
playing complicated villain types. I hadn’t really thought about who would play
Anna’s son, Zachary—he’s sort of a weird amalgam of lots of boys, including my
own son, and Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. J

Awesome cast! Now, Where can readers find your book and where can they find you online?

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Time for costumes and pumpkin carving and way-too-much-candy-to eat-all-in-one-sitting
feasts! My favorite part of Halloween? Costume parties! The adult
version of trick-or-treat, with alcoholic libations as my treat!

For years, I hosted an annual Halloween bash featuring a
deadly-but-delicious punch we concocted in college called "Apple Death."
Think of Long Island Ice Tea mixed with a Scorpion Bowl, flavored with
apple cinnamon-y goodness...

Apple Death is a "delicate" blend of vodka, light rum, Captain
Morgan's spiced rum, Apple Jack whiskey, Seagrams 7, Hot Damn cinnamon
schnapps, apple cider and cinnamon sticks... light on the cider... mixed
"to taste" with early arrivals helping with the tasting... stirred with
a long-handled wooden spoon in a giant metal vat and served cold,
(although some repeat party guests decided they liked it better warmed
up in the microwave, especially on cold Halloween nights!)

I think the original Apple Death was created by some older
Colgate friends of ours, class of 1985 (yes, I'm thinking of you, Mike
Brown!), who used grain alcohol as the base of the mixture. As we were
unable to obtain any grain after they graduated, my roommates and I
revised the recipe somewhat for our senior year Halloween party in
1986... and every October after that... right up until I moved to Cape
Cod, into a house too small to think about hosting parties of any size
in the colder months!

Twenty years of great parties and fun (intoxicated and incriminating)
party photos (most of which are thankfully not digital.) But great
memories to have...

Apple Death Punch

1 gallon apple cider

2 cups vodka (or grain alcohol, if you're young and crazy)

2 cups Captain Morgan (or similar spiced rum)

1 cup Seagrams 7 (or similar whiskey)

1 cup Apple Jack Whiskey

1 cup Hot Damn Cinnamon Schnapps

Mix in large pot (we use a lobster pot.)

Designate a taste-tester (or two) to tweak ingredients,

adding more apple jack and schnapps until achieve balance.

What's your favorite Halloween treat?

Leave a comment below to be entered to win a one of my new CAPE COD BEACH SAND CHARMNECKLACES, pictured here - one lucky winner to be chosen on November 1st! I figured since I write Cape Cod romance, why not offer up a little piece of Cape Cod as my treat... Tell me your favorite Halloween treat (candy, goodie, libation, whatever!) for a chance to win your own bit of the Cape.

Be sure to enter the Giveaway HERE for your chance to win:
Enter for a chance to win:
(1) $100 Amazon or B&N Gift Card or
(1) $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card or
(1) $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card or
(1) $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

...and visit the other blogs along this hop for more chances to win great prizes and Halloween treats! Happy Halloween!

Friday, October 23, 2015

My guest today is Andrea Downing, award-winning author of historic and contemporary romance with a distinctly Western flare. Yes, I mean Cowboys. (Sizzling hot cowboys, of course!) DANCES OF THE HEART, her latest novel, released earlier this year and sounds like a winner. Definitely on my TBR list for review!

Today Andrea wants to share an experience she had recently that she hopes will save someone else from "digital dissaster." Welcome, Andrea!

A DIGITAL DISASTER

Last
week I was at a writer’s conference in Bend, Oregon.It’s a lovely place, what I saw of it, and it
was great to reconnect with friends.So
there we all were, happily tootling along in a bus going to the wonderful High
Desert Museum, when I had a look at my phone in this bit of free time.“That’s strange,” I noted.“I have no cell.Maybe Verizon is weak out here?”

Well,
no.My pal next to me was also on
Verizon and she had three bars.Wifi
luckily was working but cellular, as I was to later learn, had given up the
ghost.Kaput.Just like that.At that stage, I didn’t panic because, of
course, there was wifi in most places, and the people who NEEDED me—yes, needed
me!—were texting.There was my daughter
in Turkey, recently bombed, and ten time zones away.There were the contractors at my house
ripping out two bathrooms in a remodeling project with plenty of
questions.And there was my nephew and
his wife in my condo in Jackson, WY, where he’d never been, with the
possibility of questions there.So I
didn’t panic.Yet.

Next
morning, after one workshop, when the phone still did not work, I took to my
room and contacted Apple via their Chat on line.Ah, Apple.You know that fabulous company that knocks out the wonderful phones
everyone wants, the computers that are the Rolls Royce of computerdom, and the ever-progressive
iPads?That Apple.And don’t you believe that their customer
service must be equally fantastic?Ha!How foolish can one be?After gaining access to my computer screen
and taking me through various steps in an effort to reactivate the phone, and
being incredibly rude when I simply asked how long does this take? And after he
wrote in red on my screen PATIENCE!!! I had to tell him it didn’t work and he
had to tell me to try again and then…he left.Just like that, ‘Brandon has left the session’ appeared on my screen and
I was left with a dead phone.Completely
dead.Nothing, nada.No texting, no email, no apps. Dead.

Next
free conference slot led me to phone Verizon.Perhaps, as it was a cellular problem, I should have rung them first—for
all the help they were able to give.You
need a new phone, I was told.We’ll ship
it out; you’re covered by the guarantee.A mix of delight and dread of spending 3 days sans phone swam over
me.I could contact people via tablet or
computer and wait patiently for Monday when the phone would arrive in
Jackson.And then, there were the
worries about setting it up, whether I could do it, and—quite honestly, this
was the biggest dread—fear of hitting an elk or moose as I drove in the dark to
my condo.

Well I didn’t hit an elk or a moose and the phone
arrived. But when did we get to this point that our lives are on our phones?Our banking, our credit cards, our flight
information, our contacts with the outer world.When did we get to this point that being without a phone meant a full
blown nervous breakdown, pulling our hair out, and drinking ourselves into a
stupor? A feeling of isolation so intense that we might as well be zombies.

Now
let me tell you one word of advice.Make
sure you have a small paper clip on you at all times.Why?Ha!Because when that phone
arrived and I had to take out and replace the SIM card, the only—and I do mean
ONLY—way to get into the compartment is with a small paper clip.Which I didn’t have.Not a single one in the entire house.I emptied my bag of flashlight, tissues,
umbrella, pens, 2 notebooks, wallet, eye drops and whatever else was living at
the bottom, and there was no paperclip.

Please
put one in your purse now.You never
know when you’ll need it to reconnect with the outer world.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

About the Book:

Successful,
workaholic author Carrie Bennett lives through her writing, but can’t succeed
at writing a man into her life. Furthermore, her equally successful but cynical
daughter, Paige, proves inconsolable after the death of her fiancé.

Hard-drinking rancher Ray Ryder can
find humor in just about anything—except the loss of his oldest son. His
younger son, Jake, recently returned from Iraq, now keeps a secret that could
shatter his deceased brother’s good name.

On
one sultry night in Texas, relationships blossom when the four meet, starting a
series of events that move from the dancehalls of Hill Country to the beach parties
of East Hampton, and from the penthouses of New York to the backstreets of a
Mexican border town. But the hurts of the past are hard to leave behind,
especially when old adversaries threaten the fragile ties that bind family to
family…and lover to lover.

About the Author:

Andrea
Downing likes to say that when she decided to do a Masters Degree, she made the
mistake of turning left out of New York, where she was born, instead of right
to the west, and ended up in the UK.She eventually married there, raising a beautiful daughter and staying
for longer than she cares to admit.Teaching, editing a poetry magazine, writing travel articles, and a
short stint in Nigeria filled those years until in 2008 she returned to NYC.She now divides her time between the city and
the shore, and often trades the canyons of New York for the wide open spaces of
Wyoming.Family vacations are often out
west and, to date, she and her daughter have been to some 25 ranches throughout
the west

Loveland, Andrea’s first book, was a finalist
for Best American Historical at the 2013 RONE Awards.Lawless Love, a short story,
part of The Wild Rose Press ‘Lawmen and Outlaws’ series, was a finalist for
Best Historical Novella at the RONE Awards and placed
in the 2014 International Digital Awards Historical Short contest.Dearest Darling, a novella,
is part of The Wild Rose Press Love Letters series and released Oct. 8,
2014.It won ‘Favorite Hero’ along with
Honorable Mentions for Favorite Heroine, Short Story and Novel in the Maple
Leaf Awards. It has also won The Golden Quill Award for Best Novella. Dances
of the Heart, her first contemporary novel, released in February
2015.

Available now!

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Welcome!

I'm an author, editor, magazine columnist, wife, and mother to three kids and two big dogs... not necessarily in that same order each day. I try to write every day and read a book a week, but life often gets in the way.

I write romance and adventure for young adults and the young at heart, and living next to the Atlantic Ocean influences everything I write...